


Popular Mechanics for Vampire Girlfriends

by ariadnerue



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, bullshit vampire biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3344120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnerue/pseuds/ariadnerue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immediately after they became a couple, there was no more hair in the shower drain.  No more dirty clothes on the floor.  No more blood-stained cups left lying around the room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Popular Mechanics for Vampire Girlfriends

**Author's Note:**

> People always assume Carmilla is all cold and junk because she's dead, but I say NUH UH. I say she runs HOT. And so I made up a bunch of other bullshit about vampires. Enjoy.

Carmilla was right. Pop culture did have a lot to answer for.

Just being Carmilla’s roommate taught Laura a great deal about vampires. She was strong. She was fast. She was sort of nocturnal, but she didn’t seem to need much sleep. She could heal absurdly quickly when she was hurt. Her senses were sharper than the average human.

Besides that, however, the books and movies got a lot of things wrong.

She couldn’t turn into a bat. A panther, yes, but not a bat. When exposed to direct sunlight, she neither burst into flames nor sparkled. She just got a bit grumpier than usual. The sight or smell of blood didn’t drive her into an animalistic frenzy. Usually it just resulted in a jab at Laura’s clumsiness ending in a paper cut or a snide and vaguely sexual remark about her period.

Then there were the things Laura learned upon becoming Carmilla’s girlfriend.

Her skin was warm to the touch. Hot, really. Like, she was warmer than most people. That did explain why she had no issue wearing tank tops and cutoffs regardless of the weather. Laura first commented on it when they’d been together only a few days, Laura dozing in Carmilla’s arms while the vampire was reading what appeared to be Don Quixote in the original Spanish.

Laura hummed happily into Carmilla’s shoulder and felt her laugh.

“You’re just so warm,” Laura sighed in answer to Carmilla’s unasked question.

“Did you expect me to be cold?” Carmilla asked lowly, and Laura laughed when she pressed a warm kiss to her head as she turned the page.

“Well… yeah,” Laura admitted, disentangling herself a bit from Carmilla’s arms so she could look at her. “I mean… you’re dead, right?”

“Undead, sweetheart,” Carmilla replied with a smirk. “There’s actually a pretty big difference.”

She hadn’t really explained it much beyond that. She didn’t seem to know exactly how it all worked herself. Which she made Laura promise not to tell LaFontaine for fear of waking up in the bio lab at the business end of some ‘minimally invasive probing.’

Sleeping with Carmilla led to the discovery that she had a heartbeat. It was slower than most, but it was strong and it was there. She only ever seemed as dead as she was when she had to go for too long without blood. She got weak and slow, her skin turned cold, her heartbeat became faint.

Laura definitely preferred strong, fast, hot Carmilla. And that thought made her blush.

Speaking of which, Carmilla could blush. She was just really good at suppressing it most of the time. But Laura had seen the pink in her cheeks and on her chest multiple times when they were alone. She teased her for it, and that just made her blush harder.

It took a truly obscene amount of alcohol for a vampire to get drunk, Laura learned. So Carmilla usually just skipped the alcohol and drank from Laura instead. It was something to do with hormones, she assumed, or pheromones, or some other biological thing, but the fact that Laura was so incredibly in love with Carmilla (or perhaps vice versa) made her blood more effective than booze. Her eyes became cloudy and her words slurred just a bit and she blushed a lot and she became exceedingly cuddly. And even in her drunken state she always licked Laura’s neck clean afterward because apparently vampire saliva was a natural coagulant.

There was no convenient how-to guide on having a vampire girlfriend, so Laura absorbed all this information slowly.

But the biggest shock of all had nothing to do with her biology. And it took Laura weeks to even notice it.

Carmilla was _tidy_.

Immediately after they became a couple, there was no more hair in the shower drain. No more dirty clothes on the floor. No more blood-stained cups left lying around the room.

She was still moody and rude and she still stole Laura’s food and tampons, so at least Laura knew she hadn’t been pod-peopled or something. But the change had been so sudden and so complete, it actually made Laura a bit nervous.

“You know I don’t want you to like… change, right?”

Carmilla glanced up from her book, resting her eyes on Laura sitting tensely at her computer. It was a quiet evening, two weeks after the dorm room suddenly became clean, and Laura could practically feel Carmilla’s eyes on her.

“Sorry, what?” Carmilla asked, and Laura nearly laughed at the sincere confusion in the question.

Laura turned her desk chair to face Carmilla’s bed, biting her lip nervously and fiddling with the hem of her flannel.

“It’s just… I mean I really appreciate how clean everything is now and I definitely don’t want that to stop,” she began defensively, and Carmilla just lifted an eyebrow and kept staring at her. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to… go out of your way, just for me. You know?”

The last thing Laura expected Carmilla to do was laugh. But that’s exactly what she did. It wasn’t even her normal throaty chuckle. It was an honest belly laugh that left her bent almost double on her bed, her book falling to the floor with a thud.

Laura blushed and tried to pout, but she couldn’t quite keep herself from smiling. She’d never heard Carmilla laugh like this before. But Carmilla caught the miffed look on her face regardless.

“Sorry, no, I’m not…” Carmilla began breathlessly, wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s just… it’s funny. It’s ironic.” Laura frowned at her. Carmilla shook her head and leaned forward, grabbing the seat of the desk chair and rolling Laura closer. Laura crossed her arms and refused to look at her as Carmilla sat up at the edge of the bed and tugged Laura into the space between her legs. “The cleaning is actually the one thing I’m not doing for you, darling.”

“What do you mean?” Laura asked, finally relenting and wrapping her arms around Carmilla’s neck.

“I’m clean on my own,” she replied with a shrug. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, travelled and tried to be… inconspicuous, you learn to pick up after yourself. It’s second nature.”

The frown returned to Laura’s face.

“Then why were you such a slob before?” she demanded, and Carmilla laughed lightly.

“That’s phase one of the ‘roommate from hell’ act,” she said, hands slowly sliding around Laura’s waist and tugging her a bit closer. “Sometimes it was enough to scare a girl off.”

Laura stared at her, the points rapidly connecting in her head.

“You were… trying to save me,” she said slowly, and Carmilla looked down in a gesture that Laura now recognized as her suppressing a blush. “The dean made you my roommate because I was your next target, and you were trying to save me.”

“I thought you’d already figured that part out,” Carmilla teased gently, though she still wouldn’t meet Laura’s eyes.

“But wait,” Laura blurted, and Carmilla rolled her eyes fondly. “Why were you still so messy even after you told us everything?”

“You mean after you tied me to a chair and starved me?” Carmilla sighed dramatically, and this time Laura rolled her eyes. Carmilla shrugged and leaned her forehead against Laura’s, her gaze dropping again. “Honestly? I was hoping you’d give up. I was banking on you being much less… you, and running home to your dad.”

“You wanted to get rid of me?”

“I wanted you to be safe,” Carmilla sighed. She leaned back a bit, fingers tightening possessively on Laura’s hips. “By then I wasn’t trying to save you just to spite Mother. I was trying to save you just… just to save you.”

Laura gazed at her silently, a smile tugging at her lips, until Carmilla finally caved and a light blush crept onto her cheeks. Laura laughed triumphantly and the vampire was about to snap out some witty remark when Laura leaned in and kissed her slowly. Carmilla relaxed into it, sighing all of her tension away and sliding hot hands up Laura’s back.

“You’re not trying to get rid of me now,” Laura pointed out, mumbling the words into Carmilla’s mouth and making them both laugh.

“Never again, cupcake,” Carmilla murmured without a moment’s hesitation.


End file.
